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A must for any player of the AD&D system! The wizard is the most popular character class in the game, and this new supplement provides a vast array of information such as new magic-user spells and new magical items. SRP: $15.00S. Min.: 1.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I've gotta say that the descriptions of the different schools of magic and their practitioners was pretty cool. Good information on how they act in a party, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what their personalities might be like. Useful for actually role-playing a wizard, rather than just playing them. There were a few other good things as well. Unfortunately, these are mostly wiped out by the weaknesses of the book. One of the other reviews said that this book was a bin for collecting unused AD&D arcana, and I'd say that's pretty accurate. A few semi-useful magic items, a few (mostly low-level) spells of questionable usefulness compared to existing spells, a small sampling of chem lab equipment. The real weaknesses show, however, when they try to round out the book. The kits are pretty pathetic. What's worse are the personality types, overblown and incredibly unrealistic. The suggestions for a magical college were kind of interesting, but they should have taken out some of the other junk and put in, say, a sample school. Or put in a larger selection of spells. There are many better supplements on magic out there.

This book contains a large amount of enjoyable information on the various schools of magic and provides a host of kits, but if you have a clear idea of what your character is like, none of it is really going to enhance your enjoyment of the game. The methods for researching new spells given are pointless, you could have invented much better rules yourself. There are also far too few new items (in fact, there are basically NO new items).Having said that, the new spells are worthwhile, and the afflictions are pretty cool. If you are an avid wizard fan, a good and recommended purchase, but it does not really provide as much "meat" as it should do.

This book is definitely not essential. The new spells are nice and would be the only reason to need this book. The kits are not very interesting and don't even compare to the ones in the fighter's, thieves', and bard's handbooks.However, if you love magic users then you will enjoy the handbook. There is a good chapter on roleplaying mages and on spell research as well as spellcasting under adverse conditions. This book is good for customizing a campaign or making new spells, items, or schools as well. But, for those of us that don't feel the need to go so indepth into to the world of spellcraft, this book won't be missed.

If you are really into wizards, you can get this and it will be an enjoyable evening or two of reading. But its not really needed. Want to make your wizard into an arcane enthusiast? Want to skew his spell selection towards illusionist spells? You can already do that based on what you have in the Player's Handbook (2nd Ed). It contains some good ideas for development and fleshing out of your character but the kits themselves are not that useful. Some new spells are interesting.

Think of this book as a starting point for your own research into historical wizard archetypes. There are thousands of books out there that you can go to to find more detail on how to play a tribal witchdoctor or a pagan warlock.

Please note this book is not really useful if you Play 3rd or 4th Edition of the game (other than for background into playing a wizard generally).

This ain't the best of the complete class books. I found most of the kits not very useful, and the description of the specialists was nothing more but repeating the Player's handbook - let's not mention the "special abilities" for specialist mages (I'm talking about a +1 save vs alteration magic at level 17 here!). If you want some more spells, especially some necormancy, then get this book, it has some really cool spells in it. But that's about all.

The book is not their best handbook. It would be about 5th. And really does not have any good kits like the thiefs or Bards etc. The main thing to note is that D&D is now on its 3rd edition; and this book is for the 2nd. So really not practical. But can only be used for background.

This handbook has a good chapter on roleplaying mages and on spell research as well as spellcasting under adverse conditions. This book is good for customizing a campaign or making new spells, items, or schools as well. There are also a couple of new spells.

This wonderful book is a rules supplement for AD&D (2nd Edition). Seeking to expand the available information on the Wizard character class, this book contains information on schools of magic and specialization, wizard kits, combat and the wizard (really spell usage), and casting spell under unusual conditions. It also has lists of new spells (some not earlier brought over from 1st Edition), familiars, magical disease, and so forth.

Overall, I found this to be an excellent resource for AD&D. The kits are very interesting, and open up all sorts of new vistas for making magic interesting and unique in your campaign. But, the most helpful part to me was the chapter on combat and the wizard – instead of just searching the list and cherry-picking spells, it taught me how to select a well-balanced and useful list of spells. And, of course, I always like seeing new spells.

So, let me just sum up by saying that this is a great resource for anyone playing a wizard in AD&D, one that you should definitely acquire.